Thread: 12K Chinese Stone

I was wondering is a 12000 grit Chinese polishing stone would be a good, cost-effective alternative to more expensive stones such as the Belgian coticle or Shapton. Any help would be great. I was planning on using a Norton 4000/8000 and then finishing with a 12000 before stropping on Tony's legendary red latigo.

The basic "Chinese 12k" so often spoken of here isn't really a replacement for a coticule or a Shapton, but it's a nice, versatile, and forgiving polisher in it's own right. It's almost a sacrilege to say so... but I like it even better than some very classy German finishers I've tried. I probably just need more experience with the big-name stones.

A lot of guys report very good results with that stone. You can't beat the price if you get a good one. I was urged to get the razor shave ready with the 4/8 and shave test. If it is good at that level go to your 12k to see about refining and improving the shave even more.

yes it is a cost effective alternative. as far as results go you will not know until you try it.
as far as i can tell there is a fair variation among those, and the 12000 grit that is being attached to these is in my opinion poor historical inaccuracy.

I finally got around to buying and playing with a C12K, a few weeks back. Personally, i found it to produce a nice shaving edge over-all. I would be more inclined to call it a C10K, but that could just be my particular natural stone. I also think, one would benefit considerably if they followed it with a pasted strop as well.
Although, they are slow, relatively speaking; for the price, its one of the best natural hones on the market, imo...again, for the price.

Thanks,

Mac

So how did the Chinese 12K get the grit designation ? I went to the website where I got mine here at Woodcraft and that is what the blurb in the description says. "Extremely fine (12,000+) grit natural water stone quarried in the Guangxi province of China." I' haven't a clue what the actual grit is but I'm just saying, this is probably where the notion that we see repeated on the forums came from. I agree with Mac that bang for the buck it is a good finisher if you get a good stone. I'll stick with my Escher though.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

So how did the Chinese 12K get the grit designation ? I went to the website where I got mine here at Woodcraft and that is what the blurb in the description says. "Extremely fine (12,000+) grit natural water stone quarried in the Guangxi province of China."

To my knowledge, there is no official, standard or even organized ratings for natural hones and, to be honest, I have my doubts about the veracity of synthetic hone grit ratings, too.

With natural stones, the grit rating is typically going to be someone's best guess and it's hard to tell whether that guess was made by someone who wanted to guess high, wanted to guess low, knew what they were talking about or were otherwise motivated to even be in the ballpark of what might be right.

At least with synthetics, there will be some consistency, although one manufacturer's 8000 grit could be 6000 to 10000 grit (making it really a 6000) where another manufacturer could include only highly sorted grit of 8,000 or better. You've got this sort of issue with virtually all abrasives, though.

I'm considering the idea of doing scratch pattern evaluation and measuring at very high magnification to grade abrasives. I think that the scratch pattern tells us more than anything else with width, average scratch lines per millimeter and the shape of the scratch (sharpness of the grit) would be excellent for scientific grading.

Originally Posted by PapaBull

I'm considering the idea of doing scratch pattern evaluation and measuring at very high magnification to grade abrasives. I think that the scratch pattern tells us more than anything else with width, average scratch lines per millimeter and the shape of the scratch (sharpness of the grit) would be excellent for scientific grading.

I think that is a great idea, but even that has a limitation as depth,,, All things being equal a slight difference in pressure/direction would change the depth of the scratch patterns... Zowada has some great pics here and there are more pics around the froum by other people that all seem to tell different stories when it comes to scratch patterns... Looking right there, in the Wiki, I am seeing that the $34 Chinese is the smoothest finisher made, but my face says otherwise...
I am just not all that convinced that this "Art of Honing" can ever be very scientific... JMHO


To the OP:

As you can see in those pics, the Chinese stone can be a great finisher, But it requires many more laps then most other stones, which with every lap increases the odds of a mis-cue that messes up a lot of the foundation work...

Great idea PapaBull!

In my tool and die days some of the parts made required a specific surface finish and the measurements were performed by a machine shop inspector. This type of inspection (surface roughness) would incorperate depth of scratches into the final surface roughness measurement. I do not have access to this type of equipment any more but if someone does, this would be the test to perform. Do be aware that original surface finish and handling after honing may effect the results.

Here's a link that describes the process. http://www.engineersedge.com/surface_finish.htm

It is the first site I selected to read and I am sure a Google search may provide better results.

I've done series of tests with the 200X scope similar to what Tim has on his site, but I was thinking more along the lines of higher resolution and 1000 to 1600x magnification from an industrial scope. While I feel there would still be some "deviation" based on scratch depth and what have you, comparing samples handled in the same fashion would at least put them on a somewhat level playing field. Additional study of the abrasive structure at high magnification can tell us a lot, too. And while to some degree, the mystery of honing micro-edges may be part of the appeal, there's some value to be had in seeing what's really going on, in my opinion.

I've got some 200,000 grit abrasive coming in this week that I'm really looking forward to checking out.